Week 5 - Root Vegetables

Let's get one thing clear...I don't garden. Bugs are the biggest deterrent, but who am I kidding? Green things die in my household. I don't remember to water them. I have a similar and equally valid excuse for not having children. I'm not a bad person, honestly...just ask my mom. Although, she might disagree because I don't have children...

This week's assignment was to photography "The Roots of Power" for use on a pop up display. While I shot to the layout for the assignment, I also experimented with other formats to see what else I could create. Since I don't garden, I headed to the local farmers market in Ramsey, NJ. Once there, I headed to the booth of Blooming Hill Farms, a local farm about 25 miles from my house, where Doug and I attend Farm-to-Table dinners. Not only did they have root vegetables, but they had pulled-from-the-ground dirty root vegetables; just the look I was after. To be frank, some of the vegetables I purchased I couldn't identify. I actually googled "purple root vegetable" to find out one of my images was of a kohlrabi. Whatever that is.

Once back in the studio, I set to work. Carrots first. I used brown butcher paper as the background, to get a fresh from the brown paper bag look. After several iterations and many lighting setups, the shot to the right is the one that I preferred:

The carrot shot was probably one of my favorite from the entire shoot, but I played with many of the other vegetables that I purchased. The next attempt was with a mix of vegetables. I played around with different formats and ended up getting the best shot for the assignment format, as you can see below left.

I then went a bit unusual for my style. Thoughts? Opinions?

I actually really like this one, and I'm considering trying a whole series of fruits and veg in this style.

I had intended to take some shots of the vegetables cooked, but ran out of time when the vegetables began to get a little soft.

The subject for next week is Chocolate. I'm thinking hot fudge sundaes, but we'll see what other ideas come up over the next few days.